Fact blindness

[Spoiler alert!  This post contains spoilers for the most recent Doctor Who episode, "Lucky Day."  If you're planning on watching it and would prefer not to know about the episode's plot, watch it first -- but don't forget to come back and read this.]

In his book The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis writes the trenchant line, "The trouble with trying to make yourself stupider than you actually are is that you usually succeed."

In one sentence, this sums up the problem I have with cynics.  Cynicism is often glorified, and considered a sign of intelligence -- cynics, so the argument goes, have "seen through" the stuff that has the rest of us hoodwinked.  It's a spectrum, they say, with gullibility (really dumb) on one end and cynicism (by analogy, really smart) on the other.

In reality, of course, cynicism is no better than gullibility.  I wouldn't go so far as to call either one "dumb" -- there are a lot of reasons people fall into both traps -- but they're both equally lazy.  It's just as bad to disbelieve and dismiss everything without thought as it is to believe and accept everything without thought.

The difficulty is that skepticism -- careful consideration of the facts before either believing or disbelieving a claim -- is hard work, so both gullibility and cynicism can easily become habits.  In my experience, though, cynicism is the more dangerous, because in this culture it's become attractive.  It's considered edgy, clever, tough, a sign of intelligence, of being a hard-edged maverick who isn't going to get taken advantage of.  How often do you hear people say things like "the media is one hundred percent lies" and "all government officials are corrupt" and even "I hate all people," as if these were stances to be proud of?

I called them "traps" earlier, because once you have landed in that jaundiced place of not trusting anything or anyone, it's damn hard to get out of.  After that, even being presented with facts may not help; as the old saw goes, "You can't logic your way out of a position you didn't logic your way into."  Which brings us to the most recent episode of Doctor Who -- the deeply disturbing "Lucky Day."

The episode revolves around the character of Conrad Clark (played to the hilt by Jonah Hauer-King), a podcast host who has become obsessed with the Doctor and with UNIT, the agency tasked with managing the ongoing alien incursions on Earth.  Conrad's laser focus on UNIT, it turns out -- in a twist I did not see coming -- isn't because he is supportive of what they do, but because he disbelieves it.

To Conrad, it's all lies.  There are no aliens, no spaceships, no extraterrestrial technology, and most critically, no threat.  It's all been made up to siphon off tax money to enrich the ones who are in on the con.  And he is willing to do anything -- betray the kindness and trust of Ruby, who was the Doctor's confidant; threaten UNIT members who stand in his way; even attempt to murder his friend and helper Jordan who allowed him to infiltrate UNIT headquarters -- in order to prove all that to the world.

It's a sharp-edged indictment of today's click-hungry podcasters and talk show celebrities, like Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson, who promote conspiracies with little apparent regard for whom it harms -- and how hard it can be to tell if they themselves are True Believers or are just cold, calculating, and in it for the fame and money.  (And it's wryly funny that in the story, it's the people who disbelieve in aliens who are the delusional conspiracy theorists.)

The part that struck me the most was at the climax of the story, when Conrad has forced his way into UNIT's Command Central, and has UNIT's redoubtable leader, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, held at gunpoint.  Kate releases an alien monster not only to prove to Conrad she and the others have been telling the truth all along, but to force his hand -- to make him "fish or cut bait," as my dad used to say -- and finally, finally, when the monster has Conrad pinned to the floor and is about to bite his face off, he admits he was wrong.  Ruby tases the monster (and, to Conrad's reluctant "thank you," tells him to go to hell -- go Ruby!).

But then, as he stands up and dusts himself off, he looks down at the monster and sneeringly says, "Well, at least your props and costumes are getting better."  And the monster suddenly lurches up and bites his arm off.

That's the problem, isn't it?  Once you've decided to form your beliefs irrespective of facts and logic, no facts or logic can ever make you budge from that position.

The world is a strange, chaotic place, filled with a vast range of good and bad, truth and lies, hard facts and fantasy, and everything in between.  If we want to truly understand just about anything we can't start out from a standpoint either of gullible belief or cynical disbelief.  Yes, teasing apart what's real from what's not can be exhausting, especially in human affairs, where motives of greed, power, and bigotry can so often twist matters into knots.  But if, as I hope, your intent is to arrive at the truth and not at some satisfying falsehood that lines up with what you already believed, it's really the only option.

I'm reminded of another passage from Lewis, this one from the end of his novel The Last Battle.  In it, the main characters and a group of Dwarves, led by one Diggle, have been taken captive and held in a dark, filthy stable.  All around them, the world is coming to an end; the stable finally collapses to reveal that they've all been transported to a paradisiacal land, and that the dire danger is, miraculously, over.  But the Dwarves, who had decided that everyone -- both the Good Guys and the Bad Guys -- were lying to them, still can't believe it, to the extent that they're certain they're still imprisoned:

"Are you blind?" said Tirian.

"Ain't we all blind in the dark?" said Diggle.

"But it isn't dark!" said Lucy.  "Can't you see?  Look up!  Look round!  Can't you see the sky and the tree and the flowers?  Can't you see me?"

"How in the name of all humbug can I see what ain't there?  And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?"

Further attempts to prove it to them meet with zero success.  They've become so cynical even the evidence of their own eyes and ears doesn't help.  At that point, they are -- literally, in the context of the story -- fact blind.  Finally Diggle snarls:

"How can you go on talking all that rot?  Your wonderful Lion didn't come and help you, did he?  Thought not.  And now -- even now -- when you've been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you're still at your old game.  Starting a new lie.  Trying to make us believe we're none of us shut up, and it ain't dark, and heaven knows what."

Ultimately Lucy and Tirian and the others have to give up; nothing they can say or do has any effect.  Aslan (the lion referenced in the above passage) sums it up as follows:

"They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of understanding.  Their prison is only in their own minds, yet, they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out."

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